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Do you guys know why wheather and vol-turn and stuff like that gets used so much?

Simple, because they are the strategies that work the best. Competitive players tend to play to win and to be honest, you don't get bonus points for being original. Maybe if your original sets work just as well as the commonly used ones, but most of them tend to be inferior to the regular ones.

^This.

But seriously, people use weather because it works well and is generally easy to use. Plus, there are a lot of pokemon that benefit from weather.
If you choose not to use weather, great! You're slightly more original. If you do choose weather, you can use it to get high up on the ladder, if you know how to use it.

I'm honestly surprized by these comments.
1) No one mentioned the Abomasnow strategy stolen and used by nearly everyone over the Global Battle Union
2) Get some originality here. Seriously. A Baton Pass Mew? How original.

Here's some REAL originality:

Sand) Pair Tyranitar with Reuniclus (Overcoat) in 2vs2 battle. Tyranitar sets up SR, while Reuniclus TR. Tyranitar's Focus Sash keeps it alive to use a STAB Rock Slide, and Reuniclus is bulky enough to sweep any survivor with Psychic.

Hail) Abomasnow and Articuno. Abomasnow can semi-sweep with its movepool, while Articuno can set Hail back up if need be, and it can set up barriers.

Rain) Set away from Surf + Water Absorb for once. Politoed and Lanturn in 2vs2. Politoed has Protect, takes no damage from the STAB&ElectricGem Discharge by Lanturn. Lanturn then uses Aqua Ring to stay alive longer, while Politoed spams Hyper Voices.

I'm honestly surprized by these comments.
1) No one mentioned the Abomasnow strategy stolen and used by nearly everyone over the Global Battle Union
2) Get some originality here. Seriously. A Baton Pass Mew? How original.

Here's some REAL originality:

Sand) Pair Tyranitar with Reuniclus (Overcoat) in 2vs2 battle. Tyranitar sets up SR, while Reuniclus TR. Tyranitar's Focus Sash keeps it alive to use a STAB Rock Slide, and Reuniclus is bulky enough to sweep any survivor with Psychic.

Hail) Abomasnow and Articuno. Abomasnow can semi-sweep with its movepool, while Articuno can set Hail back up if need be, and it can set up barriers.

Since when was TR in doubles original? Or sandstorm? And Reuniclus on a sand team? Nope, never heard of that before.

Also, I haven't fought very many baton pass mews. Just saying.

Anyway, we mostly play singles here. It's a lot different then doubles.

Oh, yes. A lot of what one will see when playing competitively are Baton Pass, Rain, Sand...etc, but I'm just whining. The metagame DOES change and you always have that one player that uses those "rogue sets".

A Remnant of the Battling Academy:
[IMG]http://i52.*******.com/200s1s4.gif[/IMG]

I'm honestly surprized by these comments.
1) No one mentioned the Abomasnow strategy stolen and used by nearly everyone over the Global Battle Union
2) Get some originality here. Seriously. A Baton Pass Mew? How original.

Here's some REAL originality:

Sand) Pair Tyranitar with Reuniclus (Overcoat) in 2vs2 battle. Tyranitar sets up SR, while Reuniclus TR. Tyranitar's Focus Sash keeps it alive to use a STAB Rock Slide, and Reuniclus is bulky enough to sweep any survivor with Psychic.

Hail) Abomasnow and Articuno. Abomasnow can semi-sweep with its movepool, while Articuno can set Hail back up if need be, and it can set up barriers.

Rain) Set away from Surf + Water Absorb for once. Politoed and Lanturn in 2vs2. Politoed has Protect, takes no damage from the STAB&ElectricGem Discharge by Lanturn. Lanturn then uses Aqua Ring to stay alive longer, while Politoed spams Hyper Voices.

All of those strategies are gimmicks and Overcoat is an inferior Magic Guard. The reason people use certain things a lot (e.g. VolTurn) is that they work. Originality isn't common in competitive battling because, say, if you use DD Crawdaunt in OU, you could use DDNite and get better results, because DDNite is flat-out better than DD Crawdaunt.

Oh, yes. A lot of what one will see when playing competitively are Baton Pass, Rain, Sand...etc, but I'm just whining. The metagame DOES change and you always have that one player that uses those "rogue sets".

I actually only see a baton pass team every now and then. Maybe one out of twenty battles.

Originality isn't common in competitive battling because, say, if you use DD Crawdaunt in OU, you could use DDNite and get better results, because DDNite is flat-out better than DD Crawdaunt.

I'd personally compare it to DD Gyarados. Crawdaunt is strong and all, but it's hard to set up with it and it's easily revenge killed.

By the way bugcatchersdream, see them for your self. DON't call a strategy a gimmick without actually seeing it work. I use those kinds of strategies all the time, and THEY WORK WONDERS, trust me to that extent.

I'll give you that. I don't play doubles at all, so I can't really say anything about how they work. However, originality does not necessarily equal success. Winning with a Pokemon like Beedrill is something you do for fun, not to actually ladder. The tiering system exists for a reason.

Baton Pass is for people too lazy to learn any real strategy. At least winning a weather war takes some degree of skill, baton pass is just jask lead>pass to vap>pass to espeon>bleh.

Most baton pass players ragequit after you KO one pokemon.

I've seen this amazing baton pass chain that all the pokemon could work as the receiver. One would attempt to sweep, and if it came across something it couldn't handle, it baton passed. I remember taking out a pokemon, but they just shrugged if off and won anyway.

If used by a good player, it can actually be amazing. Though most people I see do what you said....

I've seen this amazing baton pass chain that all the pokemon could work as the receiver. One would attempt to sweep, and if it came across something it couldn't handle, it baton passed. I remember taking out a pokemon, but they just shrugged if off and won anyway.

If used by a good player, it can actually be amazing. Though most people I see do what you said....

This has inspired me to make a non-linear Baton Pass team, without Ninjask. Am using Gorebyss though...
But for some reason it won't let me put Superpower on Spinda.

I'm a rain team user, I'll admit, BUT I use uncommonly found in rain (Blissey, Lapras, Dugtrio, Swampert, Sniper Kingdra with scope lens) and I was the first to use a Special Dragonite in rain. I started using it right after the likes of Darkrai were banished to ubers again early meta.

If I might add, Sniper Kingdra with Scope lens is wonderful. It forces rage-quits on noobs trying to ladder before the battling even begins, thinking that it's swift swim, and brings more rage-quits when their neutral counter gets a x4 hydro Pump to the face, thanks to sniper, scope lens, STAB, and Rain.

I'm a rain team user, I'll admit, BUT I use uncommonly found in rain (Blissey, Lapras, Dugtrio, Swampert, Sniper Kingdra with scope lens) and I was the first to use a Special Dragonite in rain. I started using it right after the likes of Darkrai were banished to ubers again early meta.

If I might add, Sniper Kingdra with Scope lens is wonderful. It forces rage-quits on noobs trying to ladder before the battling even begins, thinking that it's swift swim, and brings more rage-quits when their neutral counter gets a x4 hydro Pump to the face, thanks to sniper, scope lens, STAB, and Rain.

lol. Claiming you started special dragonite in rain...just lol.

Anyways I'm a big fan of rain too simply because its a far more flexible team style to play with then either sand or sun. That's why rain has remained a dominant weather because it can run so many different kinds of pokemon with different kinds of sets and function well. Sure there are rain staples, but its OU there are staples to every Archetype taking advantage of them doesn't make you any less creative as long as you don't go all out and use completely bog standard mons. Sun is the same way new types of teams are being discovered all the time like the recently popularized sun stall a team type that can be horribly annoying to face. Sand is probably the team type that suffers from being the most bog standard and that's sad because it too has the ability to be fairly flexible with the way it operates. Anyways the point of my post is that originality in teams is still very much alive and not everyone resorts to using bog standard stuff to succeed. In fact most of the top players use things that destroy bog standard, Anti-Meta pokemon should never be overlooked.

Just one last thing, Non-weather teams can function very well in this metagame as well. So all in all you don't have to even use weather to succeed in this metagame you just have to know the right way to build a non-weather team that can succeed.

Some rules are made with all intentions to break
And she defends it with a warped rationale
But I've seen what happened to the wicked and proud
When they decided to take on the throne for the crown

Well not really considering in rby there were less than half the pokemon there are now and every team had the same standards. In every single tier that you play there will always be a top tier core / certain strategy that you will see often. It's just that now the game is losing competitiveness as most matches are decided before they even begin based on team matchup.

Team Matchup effectively is the BW OU metagame, with team preview negating any nasty little surprises you may have such as magnezone or dugtrio. A skilled player can defeat a less skilled player with a bad team matchup, but if half of your offense is stopped by one of their pokes and the other half is stopped by another pokemon, you're probably going to lose. Thanks to team preview, you don't even have the surprise factor; they know what they need to use to beat your team. Prediction can help, but if the opponent is just as good as you are it becomes less of a factor.

Well not really considering in rby there were less than half the pokemon there are now and every team had the same standards. In every single tier that you play there will always be a top tier core / certain strategy that you will see often. It's just that now the game is losing competitiveness as most matches are decided before they even begin based on team matchup.

My number one biggest bone to pick with the metagame. I could be on a 10 win steak with my team, but because I like to use sweepers, I can lose to a team I would otherwise rape just because Quagsire and Whimisicot are on it as their abilities are basically made to troll sweepers